Consumer Reports surveyed more than 1,000 consumers and found they learned big lessons from the Great Recession this year and vowed to permanently scale back their spending.

A whopping 71 percent of Americans purchased only what they absolutely needed this year, 53 percent used credit cards less and 39 percent said they put more money into savings.

Consumer Reports calls this "intelligent thrift." They say it is replacing credit-driven spending and this new fiscal conservatism will last once the recession is long gone.

Survey after survey show Americans are scarred and scared after two years of recession. Even when it ends, it is bound to lurk in our spending psyche, much as the Great Depression was never far from our grandparents' and great grandparents' minds. It's the way boom and bust cycles work, and it's a necessary response to a generation of profligate spending with other people's money.

And that's what it was - spending with OTHER PEOPLE'S money. Middle class living standards of the last 20 years turn out to be a mirage. Now that the jobs are disappearing and the home values have plummeted, the picture is getting clearer. There is no doubt that American families are just beginning to feel the changes that are coming as the middle class undergoes these wrenching changes.

And the upheaval is sparking some interesting trends. As the banks reel in the bubble of credit they offered with abandon (who could open the mailbox without getting a credit card offer?!) it's making credit card customers very angry.

The very banks that were bailed out by the taxpayer are now jacking up interest rates for good-paying customers, denying credit, and slapping overdraft charges on debt cards. But is it right to refuse to pay your credit card balance because you think the bailed out bank that issued it is unfairly raising your rates?

Ann Minch went viral on YouTube with her September 8 rant against Bank of America. She said she was staging a debtor's revolt because her interest rate on a $5,900 credit card balance was raised from 12.99 percent to 30 percent. Her rant resonated and was viewed more than 350,000 times. Bank of America relented and lowered her rate, but there is more here. She may have been late with a couple payments. There was nothing illegal about the bank's raising her rate. And she could have paid off the balance at the old rate and closed the account.

We want to know what you think about credit card fees, the "intelligent thrift" consumer, and whether it’s wise for consumers to take matters in their own hands and refuse to pay their bills.

Call or email us with any questions about your money, and your thoughts on how the Great Recession has changed your life. Call 877-266-4189.

Money Coach with HLN's Money Expert Clark Howard

Having trouble managing money? Do your money goals seem impossible? Clark Howard wants to help you!

We're looking for individuals or families who are willing to be profiled on HLN. Those chosen will get money advice and information from Clark Howard.

This week's question comes from Ginny Wilkey of Reno, NV.

From HLN's Money Expert Clark Howard

I recently heard an interview with the economics editor of the Wall Street Journal. He said, "People are starting to save more and spend less." And I said, “Wow, why didn't I copyright that?”

But anyway, we are learning to do both of those things. The personal savings rate in the country is continuing to rise and we're getting stingier and stingier with how we stretch every dollar.

And now, the use of coupons in the United States is skyrocketing. Coupon redemption in the United States was much bigger a generation ago.

And I've had people over the years of the boom times in our country, the times of speculation, who would say, “I just can't be bothered with all that stuff you do. It must be exhausting.”

Well today, more people have decided it's not exhausting. Because according to a coupon-processing company that has been tracking the data for years, the use of coupons in the first half of this year was up by about 25%.

We're likely as Americans to redeem three billion coupons this year, which is much higher than what we were doing through the boom years.

But by comparison, you go back to the last big recession in 1992, Americans redeemed eight billion coupons - almost three times as many as we're likely to use this year. And I want to tell you, that's low-hanging fruit. That's easy money for you to grab hold of and save.

The Sunday newspapers have all those coupons in them and you can save a fortune. There's also a website called couponmom.com that'll walk you through how to use coupons most effectively and generate the most savings from them.

So now, a lot of people who might have thought using coupons was beneath them now suddenly are asking, “How do you do that?”

Well, you do it by organizing yourself. Don't buy things you don't need, don't buy things you don't like. But you should certainly consider brand substitution.

If you’ve got a coupon for a brand that you have not been loyal to or have not tried and it will save you a substantial amount of money, try it. You might like it.

If you don't like it, then you’ve made one small mistake. But if you do like it, you've saved big bucks.

HELP ME CLARK!
From HLN's Money Expert Clark Howard

LEE:

My mother is 83 and has been making payments on three credit cards that total about $350 a month. She has been paying these cards for many years. The principal has more than been paid off. My question is: Can she stop making these payments? She never has enough money in a month for her medications & glasses. I have helped as much as I can but I'm 62 and worried about my future finances.

CLARK:

Well you know, the frustration is yes, if you take what your mom has been paying each month over these years, it would obviously more than pay off the balance.

Except as they calculate all the interest charges, the balance either stays the same, shrinks a little or continues to grow.

And this is an endless cycle that is exactly where the credit card companies want your mom.

The realty is your mom should buy her medicines before she worries about the credit card companies. What are they going to do? Put her in debtor's' prison? We don't have that in the United States.

So if it's a matter of eating or having the meds she needs for good health, she should do those things and not send one penny to the credit card companies.

If she gets solidly back on her feet and somehow she's able to come up with money for them, she can pay then. Otherwise they have to sit and wait, and you have no obligation on any of her credit cards.

HLN Money Expert Clark Howard

I want to talk about criminals who break and enter without a gun. They’re thieves who have steadily become more sophisticated in techniques that allow them to raid your accounts and run off with the money.

Well, big companies tend to have the resources to block criminals.  They have their own I.T. departments.  They have a group of people who protect the corporate network and deal with “Trojan horse” attacks.

HLN's Money Expert Clark Howard.

So, who are the criminals targeting? Smaller companies. Because smaller companies may have significant cash flow, but they lack the resources or the ability to have an I.T. department, or a person whose job is to block websites or tell you what you can’t do on the computer.

So what do the criminals do? They crack into your system, quite often through e-mail, where they will find a list of people in the company; figure out how e-mail addresses work in the company; send e-mails; and in those e-mails, they will have Trojan horse programs.

But I was really excited when I read an article from USA Today about a no-brainer solution to reduce - not eliminate but to reduce the chances of a criminal stealing funds from a business bank account.

The article suggests you buy a separate computer at your business for a single purpose; not to surf the web, send or receive e-mail, nor go on Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn.

You dedicate this brand new computer to solely financial work: payroll, accessing bank accounts, bill pay and other financial accounts.

Now, I know there will be techies that will call up and say, “That is a worthless defense”.  I always hear it.  And if you have a better defense than what the USA Today technology writer has suggested, I would love to hear it.

Today, computers are so dirt cheap, and a computer to access the Internet under $300 can be an ultra-inexpensive insurance policy.

HELP ME CLARK!
From HLN's Money Expert Clark Howard

ROGER:

My daughter had to freeze her credit when her mail was stolen. Now her homeowner's insurance premiums have substantially increased. The insurance carrier said that her prior policy period premium was based upon her credit report. Since her credit is now frozen, they had no choice but to increase her premium. Can you explain the logic of this?

CLARK:

The insurer is showing that they don't have a very high IQ. What your daughter does is she goes back to the insurer and says "OK, I'll thaw my credit file for whatever credit bureau it is that you draw upon." And then they'll be able to instantly pull her credit and see that her credit standing is OK, and then in turn lower her premiums. She should also immediately file a complaint with her state insurance department because her insurer is failing to act in good faith, and that is a clear violation of state regulation of that insurer.

Having trouble managing money? Do your money goals seem impossible? Clark Howard wants to help you! We're looking for individuals or families who are willing to be profiled on HLN. Those chosen will get money advice and information from Clark Howard.

This week's question comes from Carmen and Ray Zych in Des Plaines, IL.

One of the things that I'm concerned about is that we don't have enough money to put aside.

I currently have a Roth IRA through my employer, and my husband and I each have one through our bank. What we are trying to do is sort of play catch-up. So I work part-time at a second job, and most of that money I'm putting into a retirement fund.

My husband thinks that putting everything away is foolish because if you are saving and saving and saving, you are not enjoying your life now and he has a good point. We would like to get a small little house, live in a small little town and just quietly spend the rest of our life relaxing.

We need a Money Coach!

Hear Clark’s advice for Carmen and Ray this weekend at noon on HLN

Do you need a Money Coach? Send us an iReport video with your money questions and tell us why you need the Money Coach.

Clark Behind The Headlines
From HLN's Money Expert Clark Howard

Last year, I talked about something that I hoped would give parents a way to turn their children away from stealing music.

I think one of the worst losses of moral compass in our kids has been that many think it’s OK to shoplift music. If you illegally download music on the Internet, you are stealing money from artists and composers.

So I was really excited about a new effort in Sweden where people, in return for listening to ads, would have access to unlimited free music. Or, they could pay a small fee to listen to music with higher quality sound and no ads.

It’s called Spotify. Since it launched, five million people across Europe have signed up for it, and those who sign up for it don't forget about it.

Those five million people are using it on average for an hour and 12 minutes a day, according to the Wall Street Journal. What’s even better is that this is coming to the United States, by the end of this year or early in 2010.

When it comes to the U.S., they are going to ration people onto the system. That way they won’t be overwhelmed.

It’s different going from America to Stockholm, because the population base is so much larger here. But what will happen when they open up registration is you sign up and they will send you an invitation when they feel they have room for you on the system.

Now this is in that category of "freemium" which is the new lingo with venture capitalism for the Web. You make a service available to people for free as a trial.

Once you’re their customer, they try to migrate you to premium content. In Spotify’s case, it has a premium content tie-in with the iPhone in certain countries in Europe, but not yet in the United States.

What you do is you pay them a monthly fee which provides you so many automatic downloads of songs per month that are yours permanently.

You get to listen to all the other music, ad supported. Who knows how this will do in the United States. I believe there are a lot of people who are cheap like me but are troubled by the fact that they're behaving in a criminal way.

How do you convince your son or daughter they should pay for something that is so easily available to them to steal? I hope that Spotify is a success.

HELP ME CLARK!
From HLN's Money Expert Clark Howard

KENNY:

I'm 49 years old and in a position to pay off my house over the next couple years. Paying regular monthly payments there are about 10 years left. Would it be in my best interest to keep a mortgage for the exemption or pay off the loan? The original loan was 30 years with an APR of 8% and current balance owed is $24,000.

CLARK:

8%? 10 years left at 8%? NO! First thing I want you to do is, I want you to run, not walk, to your nearest credit union.

If you're not a member, join. And look at doing a refi at the credit union for a seven year loan. A seven year loan should carry an interest rate, if your credit standing is OK - and it must be with how a reliable a payer you are - somewhere in the low 4s.

You'll cut your effective interest cost in half and your payments will not do anything ugly on you because you're just going from 10 years to seven but at half the interest rate. Wow.

Clark Behind The Headlines
From HLN's Money Expert Clark Howard

Here's something Americans may not enjoy so much. We're now just three years away from banning traditional light bulbs in the United States.

These new rules have gone into effect in Europe where it’s illegal to buy a traditional light bulb, except for those that are still on the shelf.

I can see it now: the new crime in Europe is going to be people smuggling in traditional incandescent bulbs. Instead of sneaking in cigarettes or alcohol or illegal drugs, people are going to be smuggling in illegal light bulbs.

The Germans have reacted in a panic about the traditional bulbs going away. According to a consumer research group, Germans have been buying and stockpiling traditional bulbs to try to last years into the future.

I’m sure in the United States we'll have people who look at it as a communist plot or who knows what. It is a plot. You know what the plot is?

The plot is to reduce electricity consumption. Even though there have been minor improvements in old-fashioned bulbs, they still use massive amounts of electricity and generate a lot of heat. Halogen bulbs use a lot less energy.

In Europe, the savings for families using compact fluorescent bulbs is going to be the equivalent of about $80 a year.

There are even economists in Europe who think compact fluorescent bulbs are going to lead to an increase in consumer spending because people will have about seven extra dollars in their pockets every month, but they hope Europeans will put those extra dollars into savings.

And by the way, halogen bulbs provide a really good light and may be a good compromise for people who are kicking and screaming about banning old-style bulbs. And it’ll make a big difference in the cost of people's electric bills.